Unfolding History: Gatefolds in Anniversary Issues of Fashion and Style Magazines

The foldout, also called a gatefold, is a double-page spread which expands through additional panels into a length that exceeds the format of the magazine. This changes the dimensions of the magazine page, requiring more space to unfold and read, as well as a different orientation of the reader's gaze and body. In this paper, we propose to read the fold-out page as a mode of materializing history in anniversary issues of fashion magazines. In doing so, we highlight the unfolding of gatefold features in magazines as a papery technology to represent and spatialize the (magazinal) past. Our argument draws on work in magazine studies and periodical studies that calls for more holistic approaches to the analysis of magazines and pays attention to the material substrate of reading. We show how this technology works, discussing anniversary issues of Vogue, i-D, and 032c. Our paper highlights how foldouts are incorporated into the respective stories that the magazines shape from their histories. The horizontally expanded page, we argue, not only affords opportunities to create and represent history in different visual and textual registers but also makes the past, and magazinal memories, tangible for the reader.

Fazli, S., & Assadsolimani, J. (2025). Unfolding History: Gatefolds in Anniversary Issues of Fashion and Style Magazines. Book History, 28(1), 181–211. https://doi.org/10.1353/bh.2025.a959459